ÒTHE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTYÓ Strong-willed Arrietty (left, voice of Bridgit Mendler) shows her mother, Homily (voice of Amy Poehler), an amazing object that she has ÒborrowedÓ while on her first covert mission with her father, in DisneyÕs release of the Studio Ghibli animated feature, ÒThe Secret World of Arrietty.Ó

The Secret World of Arrietty

Animation. Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Starring the voices of David Henrie and Bridgit Mendler. (G. 93 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

They may be just a few inches tall, but the tiny people who live beneath the floorboards in "The Secret World of Arrietty" are creatures of astonishing grit. When Mom asks Dad to pick up some sugar at the end of the day, the request demands more than a jaunt to the grocery store. It involves a death-defying late-night trek through a terrifying kitchen landscape slashed with shadows and vertiginous drops.

Being small isn't for the faint of heart. And Arrietty, our bitsy teen heroine, has the heart of a rebel, reaching out to the sickly boy upstairs despite stern parental objections. It seems Borrowers (the little people) and Human Beans (the big ones) simply can't be friends, not without the borrowers being trapped, killed or driven from their homes.

"Once a borrower's been seen, the bean's curiosity can't be stopped," says Arrietty's Papa, a gruff but loving sort who speaks in raspy truisms. (He's voiced, in the American dub, by Will Arnett doing a fair Clint Eastwood.) But this bean is different from other beans. This bean is the gentle, ailing Shawn (David Henrie), a poetic young soul in cotton PJs, who spies Arrietty (Bridgit Mendler) on her nocturnal sugar-gathering expedition and woos her with kindness thereafter. What unfolds is part adventure, part fairy tale, part star-crossed romance (she fits in his palm; can it get more doomed?). And the overall sum is enchantment.

Based on Mary Norton's "The Borrowers," "The Secret World of Arrietty" was created by the steady hands and fertile minds at Studio Ghibli - the outfit behind such Hayao Miyazaki classics as "Princess Mononoke" and "Howl's Moving Castle." This time, Miyazaki wrote the screenplay, but directing credit goes to veteran Ghibli animator Hiromasa Yonebayashi. It boasts many of the studio's hallmarks: the rich natural world, animated in lush, leafy detail; the promise of magic and mystery lurking around every bend; the homespun touches that make everything delightfully familiar.

What's missing is any real menace - the signature Miyazaki freak factor that turns spirits into monsters and parents into pigs. An overeager housekeeper and a pair of exterminators constitute the film's biggest threats. Wispy original music from singer-harpist Cécile Corbel only adds the air of innocence, which harks back to the studio's older fare (think My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service) and reminds us, with sun-dappled clarity, that the world we see is only part of the story.